


of bonemeal and petrichor

by chuchisushi



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: 'i'll just do it for fun btwn my other wips' i said, 'it was going to be a short fic' i said, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Enemies to Lovers to Friends, Grief/Mourning, Internalized Societal Expectations, M/M, Slow Burn, Unreliable Narrator, alpha!Corvo, omega!Daud, several K later i am thoroughly stuck in this sinkhole full of mud
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 18:53:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7769167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuchisushi/pseuds/chuchisushi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He does not expect solace or gratification from him, but something living in his chest learns to falter sweet-sore as the years pass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 'sushi don't you have like, three other dishonored wips going' yES WELL YOU SEE - no, actually, i don't have an excuse for this, this monster wip ate me alive,
> 
>  
> 
> worldbuilding notes so we all know what we're getting into before the fic itself:  
> > alpha and omega are slightly less common than beta, but not enough so to give them societal scarcity value  
> > there are positions that, traditionally, only alpha/beta/omega take, but generally things are equal opportunity as per dishonored's lore  
> >both female and male beta generally are hermaphroditic, with a knotting penis/internal testicles and vagina/cervix/uterus/ovaries  
> > female alpha typically have a knotting penis/external testicles and a blind vagina  
> > male omega typically have a nonknotting penis/no testicles and a vagina/cervix/uterus/ovaries  
> > depictions and interpretations of the characters will be influenced somewhat by their secondary sex  
> > this fic is fixed POV for corvo, with his corresponding occasionally incomplete or outright incorrect narration
> 
>  
> 
> there is no sex in this chapter (THERE IS NO SEX FOR A WHILE, ACTUALLY,,), but ratings and tags will be added and edited accordingly as more of this monstrosity is edited and posted
> 
> thanks go to [noah](http://archiveofourown.org/users/driftwoodq/profile) for betaing for me but also NO THANKS AT ALL GO TO HIM FOR WATCHING ME FALL INTO THIS PIT AND LAUGHING AT MY PLIGHT.

Daud disappears two months into his tenure as the Royal Spymaster.

Well: he does not disappear without warning, as gruff as the man’s words had been – more orders than a request. Corvo had known, with the sort of gut-deep certainty that had saved his life times in the past, that even if he’d dug in his heels about Daud cutting himself off from all contact for the next half-week, that it wouldn’t have made any difference. Corvo tells himself he enjoys the reprieve from the loitering constancy of the others’ presence in the Tower and refuses to think about how not being able to see Daud makes his skin crawl, his hackles rise. Corvo’s instincts tell him that a Daud out of sight is a Daud on the hunt, and Corvo finds every excuse he may to shadow Emily for as many hours of the day as he can wheedle out of the Royal Guard.

It’s paranoia, he knows it is, but Daud… Daud unsettles him, the Knife of Dunwall, the man who had killed Jessamine with such brutal efficiency, that had appeared in the gazebo that day like a ghost and that had haunted him like the same, lingered with him alongside the memory of the former Empress.

 

Corvo is unbonded. It is custom for all Lord Protectors, and they wear their collars open to assure their charges of their lack of chemical devotion to any other.

Corvo is an alpha, protective aggression leashed to the royal line; it was a testament to the magnetism of Jessamine’s own personality that all who met them looked towards her first. She had risen to the throne as the Unbonded Queen, and she’d died the same; she had told the people that the safety and security of Dunwall had come before the pressure of her own desires, and the nation of people dressed in mourning black for the untimely death of Euhorn Kaldwin had turned up their faces to behold her, shining, radiant, and _loved_ her.

The pack bond Corvo had had with her, with Emily, had withered and died in the depths of Coldridge, and Corvo, untethered for the first time in his life, had been _lost_ , reduced to circling his cell in spite of his broken legs like the base animal he’d stank of. None but the most stalwart of guards had dared venture close to his prison, and he’d paced until he’d _starved_ , until he’d been too weak to snarl at those who slid trays of stale bread and muddy water into his cage.

But that was part of his wariness towards Daud – more than just the memory of the assassination, more than what had followed – when Corvo had traversed the Flooded District, weak with poison and heartache, he had scented Whalers, Whalers and brine, the smell of the ocean mingled with individual notes unique to each man, woman, alpha, beta, omega that had worn a whaling mask and killed for the Knife. Muted, of course – muted from the Mark, from the bond that Daud shared with his followers, but Corvo was also Marked and had beaten them at their own game. Daud’s quarters had smelt of the Flooded District, of the particular lush edge that characterized the Outsider’s and Void’s influence, of dark depths, and of paper. It had not smelt of Daud, and Corvo had thought little of it at the time, too preoccupied with filching the keyring off of the man’s belt, but now…

But now, with Daud gone after months of becoming accustomed to his presence, with Corvo’s nerves still screaming at him to be alert for a sword in the back, Corvo is forced to admit the truth: the Knife of Dunwall has no scent that is his own.

Once Corvo notices, he cannot help from _continuing_ to notice; when Daud returns, Corvo watches the man’s interactions with the nobility of Emily’s court, how his lack of expression, of responsive scent cues lures men and women into nervous babbling from which Daud gleans the grains of incipient threats. Watches how Daud subtly alters his behaviors, the way he holds his body to rile or soothe others, switching from subtly beta to dominant alpha to preening omega. Corvo finds himself a victim of it as well, of Daud squaring his shoulders and baring a hint of teeth when he disagrees with something Corvo has decided upon, of the particular arch of Daud’s back when he wants Corvo’s attention at galas to warn him of potential danger, of the way he sinks into the crowds and becomes merely one more face in the press, disappearing from Corvo’s regard when on the hunt.

Daud has no scent, and Corvo (and the court, and the Guard, and Sokolov, and Piero) do not know whether the man is alpha or beta. (Surely not omega – every omega Corvo had known had been lean, sleek, lush if not a soldier, lethally alluring if so, men and women with smooth lines and sheathed claws. Daud is square and brusque and rough, flat planes of muscle overlaid by bulk, a heavy tread when not coaching himself to discretion – he is hands stained red and blades like butchers’ knives, and on Corvo’s worst days, he could swear that the scent-hallucination of flaking iron soaked into the man’s skin was real.)

Daud disappears, six months to the day of the last period, and Corvo bites his tongue and holds his peace and tries to accustom his nerves to the true difference in the quietness between the man’s presence and absence. (It is very little use.)

 

The court has noticed by the third time, and there are conspiratorial whispers about _why_ , rumors that the Knife of Dunwall must have a bonded, a lover whose heats he attended to. Their laughter at the ill fortune of such a beta or omega is sharp, cruel, and talk quickly turns lascivious as the idle rich focus their imaginations upon _why_ any would remain bonded to the man. Corvo tries to not listen – because such idle, baseless gossip should be below him – but.

But.

The times do match. None of the former-Whalers disappear alongside the Spymaster, but Corvo does not believe it is within Daud’s character to take from the mixed group of hand-reared orphans and scatterlings that the Knife had honed into fellow blades for something as base as need or physical pleasure. Daud does not speak of himself, his life outside the particulars of his position (and Corvo does not desire him to start doing so), but an outsider as a mate makes the most sense. Surely not another Marked? And yet, with Daud’s build and strength and reputation, surely only another who possesses the Outsider’s power would dare bed the assassin – on the other hand, Daud had not spoken of another so blessed in Dunwall, and Corvo had heard no rumors. Perhaps Daud knew they were not a threat to Emily’s safety? Perhaps they _were_ bonded? Daud always wore high collars with the buttons done up to the bottom of his chin; it wasn’t inconceivable that he had a bond bite.

Corvo catches himself thinking about what it would be like to sink his teeth into the muscle of Daud’s neck, to break the tender skin on his nape along the join of his shoulder, and shakes himself from his musing, a mixture of shame and revulsion filling his belly. It is _Daud_ – and even were it not, it has barely been even a year since the first anniversary of Jessamine’s death. In the Tower, her absence echoes, marks of her presence lingering in every corner, too soon, too soon, too soon.

 

When Daud informs Corvo that he will be going for the fourth time, Corvo dares look at the other man and ask, “Why?”

He cannot read Daud’s reaction off of the way his face shifts, because it doesn’t change, nor from the way his scent colors the air, because Daud smells like nothing, like a shallow mirror’s reflection of all the scents he’s encountered instead of like a man, but Corvo can _feel_ the way the scant two inch difference between them widens into an impassable gulf. Daud is already walking away.

“For no reason that concerns the Lord Protector or the safety of the Empire,” is what Daud says, voice as gratingly neutral as ever, and then he rounds the corner and is gone.

Corvo stands in the hall and stares after him, his hands clenched into fists, because this is not the greatest of times for the man to disappear – there are preparations to be made for the upcoming Fugue, Serkonos has extended tentative overtures of diplomacy now that the naval plague wall has been lowered, and Emily – and Emily will need to choose a Lord Protector of her own soon.

And this – all of this – this is why Corvo finds himself standing in front of the door to Daud’s chambers two days later, a copy in hand of the minutes of the most recent Council meeting regarding preparations for Fugue, opening his eyes as he dismisses the dark vision that the Outsider had given him. It is late enough at night to almost be early in the morning, but Corvo is awake – as is Daud, whom Corvo had watched pace the confines of his rooms, identifying him. He’s surprised; he’d have expected Daud to have retreated into the city, not sequester himself within the Tower – but perhaps that was why the man was here, to thwart expectations. Corvo had merely intended to leave the report somewhere conspicuous as a pointed reminder of everything that yet needed to be done, but Daud is… Daud is actually here, and…

Corvo knocks.

There is a very long pause, expectant and perhaps faintly disbelieving – and then the snick of a lock immediately preceding the door jerking open just enough to admit Corvo, an arm shooting out of the gloom within, fisting in the front of uniform of the Lord Protector, and bodily yanking Corvo off of his feet into Daud’s rooms.

Daud lets go just as quickly as he’d grabbed Corvo; the man takes several steps back, crossing his arms over the breadth of his chest and scowling at how Corvo doesn’t even stumble.

“What in the fucking Void is so damned important, Attano,” Daud grinds out, and Corvo would smirk at how easily Daud had been riled – but he takes a breath to reply and the smell of _omega_ hits him in the face.

Daud must see the way he tenses, because the line of his shoulders goes similarly stiff; Corvo inhales carefully, growls under his breath at the spice of heat.

“And here I thought the court talked all bullshit.” Corvo uses his height, pushes up and cranes his head towards the gloom of the rest of Daud’s rooms to get a face to match with the scent. “But you _do_ take the time away to ride out a heat. Of all the – ” Daud steps between Corvo and the sitting room, a well-worn scowl etched across his forehead, the hint of a growl rumbling in his chest; he doesn’t quite shove Corvo back, but it’s a near thing, his shoulders squared against his further advance. Corvo bares his teeth at him instinctively, still preoccupied with the idea that Daud actually _has_ a long-term lover – and then doubletakes when he registers Daud’s appearance, thoughts scattering as though before a gale.

“Attano,” Daud says, his voice as bitingly, sardonically patient as Corvo has ever heard it, “ _I’m_ an omega.”

 

Corvo looks down reflexively, instincts outstripping his sense of self-preservation, and then immediately jerks his eyes back upwards when a snarl rips out of Daud’s throat, the other man half-turning as though to fall into a fighting stance. “Sorry, sorry, I just – ” Corvo stammers hastily, face hot with embarrassment, and almost flinches when Daud edges towards him, leaning forward to snatch the sheaf of parchment out of Corvo’s slack hands.

Daud backs away just as awkwardly as he’d advanced, eyes skimming the words on the topmost page in the dim light from the blaze in the fireplace, and Corvo notes helplessly that Daud only comes up to about his chin out of his boots. He’s never seen the man with them off, and Corvo looks up at the ceiling so his gaze won’t drift to the exposed, sword-scarred nape of Daud’s neck or the damp, shifting expanse of Daud’s inner thighs. He’s not wearing anything more than a loose shirt unbuttoned nearly to the waist, and the rugs have been rolled up against the walls, and Corvo stares at the ceiling and the reflection of the flames flickering across it and breathes as shallowly as he can, head whirling. Daud’s rooms smell like an omega in heat, enticing like a hook caught under the skin below Corvo’s navel, and of the saltwater of sweat, and the musk of slick, and Corvo asks, “Why can I still not smell you?” without thinking about it.

The rustle of paper stills. Silence grows, stretches between them, and Corvo, finally, looks back down at Daud – who is regarding him with an opaque expression. “Nevermind – I shouldn’t have said any – ”

“I don’t. Even before the Outsider Marked me. I don’t – ” Daud stops, and frustration colors his voice, creases his brow. He gestures at himself, a jerky motion, eyes looking past Corvo. “Didn’t end up built like other omegas. It.” He falters, stops. Shakes his head, looks back down at the papers in his hand. Corvo barely breathes.

“Is this all?” Daud asks, finally, and Corvo nods. “Then get out.”

 

And for once, Corvo obeys, and goes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two chapters this time, since this one is rather short!

Corvo does not dream that night (at least none that he can remember) but he is not free of how Daud has shaken him; that feral, instinctive, animal part of himself that had ruled in Coldridge makes him fold up the clothes he had been wearing for that visit to Daud into as small of a bundle as he can manage, makes him shove it back into the furthest recesses of his wardrobe for safekeeping.

He does not dream that night, but he does the next: damp, hectic, hot dreams of the firelight reflecting off of errant beads of slick spotted on bare wooden floors, of the small, erect length that had lolled prettily against muscular thighs, of the vulnerable, unbitten nape of Daud’s neck, and he wakes gasping and hard. He digs out the bundle of clothes, breaks it open enough to release the scent that had saturated the air of Daud’s rooms, reaffirms to himself that it had not been all delusion.

Daud is an omega.

Corvo passes a cluster of nobles that afternoon, catching the tail end of a conversation about the Royal Spymaster’s absence, and has to bite back sudden, helpless laughter at the absurdity of it, at _himself_. He’d believed just as fervently, with just as much fierce conviction, and yet –

And yet Daud is an omega. An unbonded omega, near scentless but who had regular heats, that stayed – that _nested_ – inside the Tower during them. Few people knew of it, of what the man was, few enough that Daud rode out the fever alone; Corvo is sure that if he had a lover, he wouldn’t have been pacing the confines of his quarters like a restless beast at four in the morning. And Daud has been nothing if not meticulous thus far as the Royal Spymaster; Corvo is certain that if there had been a willing other, they would have been there in Daud’s rooms with him. But perhaps Daud did not want a lover – a heat fueled desire, but a knot was not imperative; Jessamine had sometimes refused his company during her heats, and Emily had been conceived outside them –

 

The thought of Jessamine abruptly dampens whatever warmth Corvo had been garnering for Daud. She and he had both been omega, and yet there had been no hesitation in the man when he’d killed her, when he’d stolen away her child – that act alone would have been beyond the abilities of many, alpha and beta alike, not to speak of omega; for one omega to slay another and tear their victim’s weeping offspring away…

Corvo remembers Daud’s voice, low as he’d picked out the words: _didn’t end up built like other omega_. What sort of omega lay at the root of the man who’d become the Knife of Dunwall? Perhaps there _was_ something wrong with Daud. Something beyond the man’s lack of a personal scent, beyond the strength in his limbs, the stoutness of his frame. Perhaps there _was_ something vicious in him, some monster that drove him to violence instead of to nurture.

Corvo shakes his head, unsettled. This… this revelation about what sex Daud was changed nothing. Nothing. He was ( _is_ ) still the former Knife of Dunwall, the current Royal Spymaster, the shallow mirror-reflection of those he passed through like a ghost. Is still the man who aped the body language of alpha, beta, omega alike, that wore and shed attitudes like a second skin, that let men and women stumble before striking. Not to be trusted, no.

Nothing has changed, and when Daud reappears the next day, grey-green eyes cool, distant, opaque, with no acknowledgment from him of Corvo’s visit, it is easy to settle back into old rhythms.

 

Nothing has changed, save for Corvo’s dreams.  

He cannot escape the Void, the trials that the Outsider sets him, plagues him with, but the Void also refuses to relinquish its glimpses of the life the Royal Spymaster led outside his duties, drops Corvo in flame-warm rooms muggy with the scent of omega. It leaves him there, trapped more often than not in rabbit warrens of bits and pieces of intimate space, and Corvo spends more than one night fruitlessly searching for an exit, waking up more exhausted than when he’d fallen into slumber.

He surrenders, eventually, tired of a fruitless fight with the fickle Void, and now, on the nights he wakes to a warm, dim space instead of the harsh never-ending blue of nothingness, Corvo wanders at a slower pace, picks up books and pages through them, folds clothes left on the bare wooden floor. He learns that Daud – if these are indeed Daud’s quarters, imprinted upon the Void – has an eclectic, varied taste in reading material: books dense enough to satisfy any scholar, speculative trash from street vendors, collections of myth and poetry. Sometimes Corvo seats himself in one of the armchairs by the ever-present fire, reads through something that catches his fancy until he wakes. At others, he seats himself, pulls up his feet and folds himself down and pushes himself back into slumber, secure in the knowledge somehow felt that nothing will attack him here.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as a note, there's a bit of a quick corvo attano/geoff curnow in this chapter as a one-off fling ヾ(●´□｀●)ﾉ

A member of Emily’s council, a former Whaler, and Captain Geoff Curnow are sent to Serkonos in reply to their overtures. The night before Geoff is set to sail, there are drinks at the Hound’s Pit, reopened underneath the joint ownership of Callista and Cecelia.

Corvo is… looser, lulled by the company and a year’s worth of memories and the liquor that flows in their wishes of safe travel; he is warm and slightly drunk on the thread of arousal that flickers around Geoff every time he smiles at the Captain. Geoff is alpha, as alpha and as unbonded as Corvo himself is, and both of them have dark memories of what had transpired the last time Geoff had left these shores; and the smell and the liquor and the superstition lead to them sparring on the narrow strip of beach next to the dilapidated folly of the Pit, leads to them continuing the fight in bed within, struggling to pin the other, burning away the last of the alcohol with adrenaline, the bared intimacy of each other stoking their mutual excitements higher until they are helpless to do anything but writhe together, sweat-slick skin to skin.

After – after, Corvo watches pre-dawn color the reflection of the sky upon the ceiling of their bolthole in the tower; after, Corvo breaks the silence with, “Chancellor Lloyd is sensible and careful. She won’t cause any trouble she can prevent. And Fisher – you’ll barely notice Fisher. Not unless something happens.” He feels Geoff stir beside him, the man propping himself up on an elbow, hair disarrayed and with a livid mark that would be covered by his captain’s uniform visible on his neck.

“I’ll watch myself,” Geoff answers, voice a dull rasp in the dim light, and Corvo closes his eyes.

He leaves a little later, dressing in the growing dawn and pressing a kiss to Geoff’s knuckles before departing for the Tower once again. His dreams, in the hours of sleep he snatches, are muddled things, tinted whale-oil blue. Later, he feels more than sees Daud tense when Corvo accepts the paper of a report from him; the Spymaster looks anywhere but at where the sleeve of Corvo’s coat has ridden up, exposing the edges of the bruises on his wrists that Geoff had given him at some point during the fight for dominance that served as foreplay for two alphas.

Daud pretends as though he hadn’t seen anything, and Corvo pretends as though he hadn’t felt the other man react.

That night he wakes from dreams of empty rooms, their fires burnt low into little more than ash, with strange blue-purple shadows like bruises pooling in the darkened spaces. The chill that has settled into Corvo’s bones has the taste of brine and the deep to it; it reminds Corvo of whalesong, and he rises while the stars are still out and dresses himself by the light of the moon. He knows he will not sleep well again tonight, and seeks out company that he knows will be awake, wanting to lose himself in the physical pull of muscles taxed, burning away some of the prickling energy underneath his skin.

“Lord Attano,” one of the former Whalers says in surprise when he settles on the roof of the Tower alongside the pair; the other figure visibly startles, nearly losing their footing on the dew-damp tiles before both Corvo and Thomas grab them.

“Thomas,” Corvo replies. “Mind if I sit the rest of the patrol?”

“Not at all. Quinn, swap with the Lord Protector; you’re out on your feet. No protests.”

Quinn doesn’t say anything in reply, just stifles a yawn even as she bows deeply, formally, at Corvo in thanks, disappearing less than a second later in a flurry of patchy shadow and rippling air.

Corvo drops into a crouch on the rooftop, facing the opposite direction from Thomas; he settles and automatically catalogs the information his enhanced senses give him even as he lets his eyes play over the Tower grounds below them, noting the movements of the Watch whenever he sees one. Thomas is a warm, silent presence behind him, scented the most blandly beta Corvo has ever encountered. With brown hair and brown eyes and a figure that is just as unremarkable as his scent, it becomes difficult to remember that Thomas _exists_ some days; it’s easy to fall into the ruse, to speak too openly, to be too incautious of one’s words. Thomas dresses like a manservant, like a butler, like a laborer, and melts into the background, but he is Daud’s second for good reasons and is as deadly as any other Whaler. Moreso, likely.

“They’re calling us the lordsmen now,” Thomas says as he shifts, stands; there’s amusement coloring his voice and scent, underneath the chill bite of the night air. Corvo groans as he stands as well, already resigned and exasperated at the antics of the court.

“Do they still believe they’re being discreet,” Corvo asks flatly, rolling his shoulders as they start off across the roofs, boots sure on the tile. He flips up his hood as he goes, sheltering his ears from the bite of the wind.

“Of course they think they are,” Thomas replies, dropping half a story and rolling back onto his feet, Corvo a shadow behind him. “But it’s harmless enough, as they don’t name all our members correctly. I give it half a week before some hysterical lord with too much to hide panics and fires his maids. Then we’ll have someone to pay special mind.” Corvo chuckles underneath his breath.

The Whalers – what Whalers that came with Daud to the Tower, to the title of Spymaster – have no uniform anymore, no more coats or vapor masks or gloves to their elbows; those that prefer masks wear Fugue motley, covering their features in gaudy or plain leather, bone, ceramic. Corvo is sure at least one cheeky former Whaler wears the scowl of an Overseer. Others pull their hoods further over their features; still others walk bare-faced. Each dresses to their tastes and comforts; nothing marks them now like the Whalers had and it adds to the quiet unease that sometimes plagues the more paranoid nobility, that marks them and makes them sloppy.

Thomas wears a heavy cloak against the temperature; underneath, he wears bland, unaccented garments befitting the manservant of a lord with conservative tastes. Corvo is sure, if pressed, that Thomas could disappear as thoroughly as any specter, weapons wrapped up in his shed cloak and folded into a bundle, going from assassin to servant out on an early-morning errand from his master. Only the faint flicker at his left hand could betray him: even covered by cosmetics, the Outsider’s Mark gleams.

But it’s muted enough, in this disguise, to pass as a trick of the light. Corvo has seen a few uncovered, though, each glimmering with every shift of muscle and sinew like river krust mother-of-pearl in blue and purple instead of acid green, the rainbow of colors inlaid into the skin of each of the men and women loyal to Daud.

Corvo finds himself speaking, thoughts plagued by the former Knife, both he and Thomas slowing to a walk, strolling as though they weren’t several stories above the ground; Thomas doesn’t turn his head towards Corvo at his words, but Corvo knows the man is listening: “Does it bother any of the others to follow a man with no scent?” The Outsider’s power smothers, suppresses personal markers, but it is not absolute. Corvo is sure the Whalers had something like a pack bond, but such a structure should have been partly rooted in scent – in the absence of it, for a particular sort of person, its lack would have been, perhaps, unsettling, needing to follow a leader that read as nothing.

Thomas is quiet as they walk but seems to come to his own decision soon enough. “Some did,” he says. “Others challenged Daud when they realized, thinking that the Outsider’s Mark would go to them upon his defeat.” Corvo huffs, amused despite himself, his noise echoed by a hint of a smile from Thomas, though the beta only continues with, “Still others preferred it.”

“Not having a scent?”

“Being unable to know if Daud was alpha, beta, omega, the pack ordering itself on ability instead of sex,” Thomas corrects, and Corvo almost asks _why_ that would be preferred before his thoughts catch up to his mouth, closing it.

“And you?” Corvo asks instead. They settle into another lee on the roofs, opposite once more, before Thomas says, carefully, “It… unsettled me, initially. The Whalers seemed like chaos – an unstructured, unorganized pack, ranks always shifting; it took time to unlearn the lessons my upbringing had instilled in me. But it was… there were fights, of course. And after Daud renounced the Whalers, after he came to the Tower to become the Empress’ man, the pack fell apart, save for those of us who came with Daud. But – ” He shifts, rolls his neck, vertebrae crunching. “It was good, for some of us. More than just a means to survive. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked.”

He lapses into silence, and Corvo keeps his eyes trained on the Tower grounds and thinks about the camaraderie that the former Whalers have with each other: a familiarity colored by intimacy and shared experience. Some small part of him is _envious_ , envious of that connection to a greater whole that had given them purpose. The sick remembrance of being utterly untethered, of having no bonds to any other and being refused the contact that could create another aches in him; he has Emily once more, but Emily and he are only one. He cannot give her a greater pack, not now, not like other children could have – it’s not safe, not so soon, when her seat upon the throne has only just solidified. When her Lord Protector is chosen, perhaps… perhaps she and they will have a bond; if her Lord Protector belonged to another pack, then perhaps she could join them; and perhaps, when Corvo himself is discharged of the rigid requirements of the position, perhaps then he could seek a more permanent, deeper connection –

The remembered memory, thought, that he will never have such a bond with Jessamine strikes him and knocks the breath from his lungs; instinctively, he curls, as though to protect himself from another blow, squeezes his eyes shut against the absolute misery that suddenly threatens him. How could be consider a marriage bond so casually so soon? While sitting alongside the second of the very man that had slain her, the man that had thrown Dunwall into chaos?

It feels like betrayal, and Corvo’s hands suddenly itch for the Heart, long to feel the leather and metal of the grotesque gift from the Outsider so he will not forget.

“Sir? Lord Attano?”

Thomas’ voice breaks Corvo’s reverie, and Corvo exhales, lungs feeling brittle inside his chest, loosens his hands and stares with detached disinterest at the fresh blood underneath his nails.

“It’s nothing,” Corvo manages, and it’s wrong, wrong, wrong, sounds horrible, but Thomas does not press and Corvo is suddenly, completely, pathetically grateful for the man’s discretion.

Corvo does not sleep, even after the watch he’d shared ends; he spends the few hours between when he'd parted with Thomas and when he would need to rise to attend to his duties sitting on his bed with the Heart clasped loosely in his hands, his eyes closed as he listens to its beat.


End file.
